《The Biblical Illustrator – Romans (Ch. 6b~8a)》

3. We may look upon it in its connection and conjunction of the parts of it with one another.

II. The second is the privilege or benefit belonging to these persons; and that is freedom and exemption from wrath and condemnation. There is no condemnation to them. Now for the better prosecution of it at this present time, we may look upon it as it lies here in the text three manners of ways, especially--First, in its specification. Secondly, in its amplifications. Thirdly, in its restriction or limitation.

1. In consideration of what Christ hath done for them. Those who are true believers, and who are incorporated into Christ Jesus, Christ hath done that for them which does absolutely and necessarily exempt them and free them from condemnation. As to instance in some particulars--

2. Now, further, it is clear also that He hath done so from consideration of what He is to us. God justifies Christ, and in Him justifies us; sanctifies Christ, and through Him sanctifies us; glorifies Christ, and in Him glorifies us. He saves us not only personally, as we are such and such particular men--Peter, or James, or John--considered in individuo; but also relatively, with respect had to His Son, as we are parts and members of the mystical body of Christ, and are knit and united to Him as members to the Head. There is no condemnation to those who are the children of God, because they are in Christ Jesus. From the circumstance of their life and conversation, because they “walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit.” An holy conversation in life shall have a happy condition after life; and there is no Condemnation at all which does follow upon it.

1. For matter of comfort and consolation. First of all, here is ground of very great encouragement and rejoicing to all true believers which are regenerate and born again, and incorporated and united to Christ, they are freed from condemnation; and, upon that account, from the greatest evil that their natures are capable of.

Absolute safety in Christ

I. The incomparable position Christian believers occupy. “In Christ Jesus.” This expression--

1. Is in keeping with what our Lord said in parable of vine and branches, and may be illustrated by reference to Noah’s safety in ark; manslayer’s security in city of refuge.

2. Means--in His hands, thoughts, company, confidence, heart; to possess Him, and to be possessed by Him; to live in the circle of His love, and embrace of His power.

3. No wonder the highest ambition of the apostle was “to be found in Him.” To be in Christ now is the preparation for being with Him forever.

II. The inestimable blessings Christian believers enjoy. “No condemnation.”

1. This does not mean--

2. We are free from condemnation, because our Surety has died and satisfied the claims of Divine justice for us. Then--

3. “No condemnation” is but the negative side of salvation. There is a positive side; for we are not only freed from death, but lifted into life.

III. The infallible evidence by which we may know whether or not such position and blessedness are ours. “Who walk not,” etc. The words have been omitted in R.V., but we may take and use them here as embodying truths frequently expressed elsewhere. (F. W. Brown.)

The great assimilation; or, man christianised

Man in Christ is--

I. Freed from sin. The great inquiry of the world has been, How can man be thus freed? All temples, synagogues, mosques, and churches, have recognised the momentousness of the question. The struggles of expiring victims--the deep groans of humanity--have borne it aloft to the throne of the Eternal. The Eternal Himself has deigned to solve the difficulty, and to answer the inquiry.

1. Though man is not freed from sin as a matter of recollection, or from its natural sequences, or indiscriminately and unconditionally. Still in the highest sense he is consciously and progressively freed from the evil forces that enchain his being, to rise to altitudes far transcending those from which he fell.

2. This freedom is effected by the redeeming agency of Christ. Christ, in the entirety of His history, is condemnatory and destructive of all sin. Let a man be in communion with Christ, and with the certainty and uniformity of law his sin shall be destroyed. No being but Christ can hush the moral thunders which rumble in the conscience; no sacrifice but His can teach the tremendous evil of sin--no power but His can burst the bonds of evil habits--no spirit but His can engage the heart’s affections, and restore them to the right object.

II. Advanced in moral excellency.

1. He realises the true idea of Divine holiness. “That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us.” The law is a transcript of the moral and transcendent excellency of the Divine nature, and man’s heart becomes its abode. His holiness is not among the indigenous conceptions of the human mind, such as Roman bravery, Grecian beauty, Stoic passivity, and Pharisaical sanctity! Christ is our “sanctification.”

2. He minds the Spirit. The Divine Spirit speaks, and he attends to what is said.

3. He has a peaceful life.

4. He has the Spirit of Christ.

III. Destined to future glorification (verses 10, 11). Though he is freed from sin, and advanced in spiritual excellency, still he must die; but born to die, lie dies to live. In the case of Christ Himself, death was the condition of a higher life. The mind must die to one life to live another: it must renounce one set of ideas and dispositions to embrace higher ones. All around us seem to be the germs of the future. Man in the future is the continuation of man in the present. The principle of life casts off its exuviae, and constructs other and higher organisms.

IV. Will enjoy the glory which belongs to Christ Himself (verse 17; cf. 1 John 3:2; Philippians 3:20-21). (J. Davies.)

At peace with God

I. The Christian’s state. “In Christ.” A union--

1. Vital.

2. Visible.

II. His character. He walks--

1. Not after the flesh--crucifixion: regulation.

2. After the Spirit--guidance: cooperation.

III. His privilege. “No condemnation” for--

1. Past offences.

2. The corruption of his nature.

3. His defective service.

4. His involuntary errors. (W. W. Wythe.)

No condemnation

I. The apostle doth not say there is now no affliction or correction. It is one thing to be afflicted, another thing to be condemned (1 Corinthians 11:32). Grace secures from eternal, not from temporal, evils. God cannot condemn and yet love, but He can chasten and yet love; nay, He chastens because He loves.

II. The apostle doth not say there is no matter of condemnation. There is a vast difference between what is deserved and what is actually inflicted. There is in all a corrupt nature, which puts forth itself in evil motions.

III. It is God’s condemnation only from which we are exempted.

1. Men condemn. What more common than for the godly to have their persons and practices, strict walking, condemned. Oh, they are hypocrites, factious, unnecessarily scrupulous, proud, and what not! Sometimes the condemnation is only verbal, going no further than bitter words, wherein their names are aspersed and their cause blackened. Sometimes it rises even to the taking away of their lives (James 5:6). But yet God condemns not (Psalms 37:32-33).

2. Sometimes conscience condemns (1 John 3:21). The inferior judge condemns in the court below, but the supreme Judge acquits and justifies in the court above.

3. Satan too condemns. He that is but God’s executioner will take upon him to be a judge. And as his pride puts him upon judging, so his malice puts him upon condemning.

IV. The particle “now” is to be taken notice of. I suppose the apostle doth not intend by it to point to any circumstance of time, as, namely, the present time of life, or the present time of the gospel. I make this to be only a causal particle; since things are so, as the apostle had made out in his preceding discourse, there is now--or upon all this--no condemnation. The apostle crowds the force of all that he had said by way of argument into this little word, and lays the whole stress of his conclusion upon it.

V. The original will hear it if we read it--“not one condemnation.” Such is the grace of God to believers, and such is their safety in their justified estate, that there is not so much as one condemnation to be passed upon them, the pardon being plenary and full (Jeremiah 50:20).

VI. The apostle speaks indefinitely with respect to the subject. He takes all in Christ into the privilege. Had he spoken in the singular number, many poor, weak Christians would have been afraid to have applied this blessedness to themselves. The difference in Paul’s expressing himself is very observable. Take him in the former chapter where he is bewailing sin, there he goes no further than himself. But now, where he is treating of privileges, he speaks altogether in the plural, as taking in the whole body of believers. VII. The positive is included in the negative. They shall not only, upon their being in Christ, be looked upon as not guilty, or barely kept out of hell, but they shall be judged completely righteous, and they shall also be eternally glorified. (T. Jacomb, D. D.)

No condemnation

We have here--

I. A new era. There has been a transition--

1. In the history of the Divine dispensation. “Now” we are no longer under the law of rite and precept, but under a covenant of gospel, wherein promise takes the place of threat, and the Holy Spirit is given to enlighten and sanctify.

2. In the experience of Christian life. The actual experience of believers comes to correspond with God’s dispensation. In the previous chapter the conflict of sin is described. “Now” we have the victory.

II. A new condition--“In Christ Jesus.”

1. Spiritual incorporation.

2. Vital union.

3. Efficient transfer. The Holy Spirit, on the part of God, and faith, on the part of man, are the instruments.

4. Practical reality. It is no superficial theory which fails before the progress of philosophy and reason. It is a certainty. God’s plan and all things in heaven and earth--conscience, death, judgment, etc.--will arrange themselves finally in accordance with it.

III. A new freedom--“No condemnation.”

1. The state goes before, involves, and it is itself greater than the privilege. You may bestow a gift on a strange child, but on your own you lavish affection and indulgence. The Christian is adopted into the family of God and possesses a child’s privileges thereby.

2. Condemnation is more than sin--the simple transgression of the law. It is more than guilt--liability to punishment. It is doom pronounced after proved guilt.

3. Observe, the freedom does not remove the fact nor the guilt of sin, but arrests its effect--the punishment is repealed. To those who are not of Christ the sentence is still unrepealed.

4. “No condemnation.”

Conclusion: The subject--

1. Urges those who have the evidence of faith to take firm gospel ground, to realise all that is intended by this negative way of putting the doctrine of justification. Live up to your privileges.

2. Addresses the Christless soul. You may be religious, but you are not falling into God’s method. You are labouring for that which is not bread, and perishing within sight of plenty. (Percy Strutt.)

Real Christians, absolved from condemnation

I. The persons described. Those who are “in Christ Jesus.” There is no phrase more frequently employed in the New Testament to denote a real Christian than this.

1. The phrase means something more than the being a Christian by a baptismal admission to the visible Church. But--

2. They represent Christ as a “refuge,” in which believers take shelter from that “wrath of God,” which naturally, by reason of sin, rests upon every man.

II. The blessing which they enjoy--“No condemnation.”

1. Then we are led to infer that out of Christ Jesus there is “condemnation”; and this is a truth which Scripture everywhere proclaims. Our own state, then, as we stand by ourselves, is one of certain ruin. It is in vain for us to flatter ourselves that we can ward off this impending anger by throwing around our characters the supposed defence of natural moral virtues. God regards us as transgressors, and, viewing us in that light, He cannot but inflict upon us sin’s tremendous penalty. “He that hath not the Son hath not life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.”

2. But for the Christian there is “no condemnation.” Being “in Christ,” God no longer regards him as standing alone, and not as he was in Adam. As one with Adam, he had Adam’s guilt imputed to him. But now, being one with Christ, Christ’s righteousness is imputed to him. Now God loves him, and blesses him, for the sake of Him who has become his Saviour.

III. The evidence afforded of their being in possession of the blessing--“Walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” You have heard men speak of resting on Jesus; they have talked of His merit, of His dying for their sins, and they have professed to believe on His name. But the profession of faith has been everything, and the practice of faith has been nothing. Now the text only expresses what is expressed in Scripture over and over again; that every child of God will be a lover of practical piety. Faith in Christ will always bring forth the fruit of holiness. (W. Curling, M. A.)

Present discharge from condemnation must produce a present joy

Open the ironbound door of the condemned cell, and by the dim light that struggles through its bars read the sovereign’s free pardon to the felon, stretched, pale and emaciated, upon his pallet of straw; and the radiance you have kindled in that gloomy dungeon, and the transport you have created in that felon’s heart, will be a present realisation. You have given him back a present life, you have touched a thousand chords in his bosom, which awake a present harmony; and where, just previous, reigned in that bosom sullen, grim despair, now reigns the sunlight joyousness of a present hope. Be yours, then, a present and a full joy. (O. Winslow, D. D.)

No condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus

I. When a sinner closes with Christ, God takes him on the instant into reconciliation. He should therefore feel his conscience to be relieved from the guilt and dread of his sins; and, instead of being any longer burdened with them as so many debts subject to a count on some future day, he has a most legitimate warrant for looking on the account as closed. Christ hath made atonement, and with it God is satisfied; and if so, well may you be satisfied.

II. Who they are that have this inestimable privilege.

1. They are in Christ. But lest we should wander into a region of obscurity, let us not forget that, for the purpose of being admitted into this state of community with the Saviour, the one distinct thing which you have to do is to believe in Him. There is nothing mystical in the act by which you award to Him the credit for His declarations; and this is the act by which you are grafted in the Saviour. As you hold fast the beginning of your confidence and persevere therein, the tie will be strengthened; the relationship will become more intimate; the communications of mutual regard will become more frequent, and more familiar to your experience.

2. They walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit.

No condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus

I. The condemnation here mentioned. As to its direct and proper notation, it signifies judgment against one. The non-condemnation of persons in Christ may be proved by, or is grounded upon--

1. Their justification. He that is a justified man cannot be a condemned man, for these two are contrary and incompatible.

2. Their sanctification. Wherever the union is with the Son there is sanctification by the Spirit. Now such as are sanctified shall never be condemned (Revelation 20:6), for upon this the power and dominion of sin is taken away, the bent of the heart is for God, and there is the participation of the Divine nature.

3. Their union with Christ. Those that are so near to Christ here, shall they be set at an eternal distance from Him hereafter? will the Head be so severed from His members? Besides, upon this union there is interest in all that Christ hath done and suffered; he that is in Christ hath a right to all of Christ.

II. The application.

1. This proclaims the misery of all who are not in Christ Jesus. The cloud is not so bright towards Israel but it is as dark towards the Egyptians. There is no condemnation to them who are in Christ; what more sweet? but there is nothing but condemnation to them who are out of Christ; what more dreadful?

2. I would exhort you to make sure of this exemption from condemnation. What can be so worthy of our utmost endeavours! what pitiful trifles and very nothings are all other things in comparison of these! What are we to do that it may be to us no condemnation?

3. I would speak to those who are in Christ, to excite them to be very thankful and highly to admire the grace of God. How doth the traitor admire the grace and clemency of his prince who sends him a pardon when he expected him trial and sentence to die? And as you must be thankful to God the Father, so, in special, to Jesus Christ; it is He who was willing to be condemned Himself that He might free you from condemnation.

4. The main tendency and drift of this truth is comfort to believers. This no condemnation is the ground of all consolation.

In Christ no condemnation

1. Paul having said, “So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin,” goes on to say, without any break, “There is therefore now,” etc. Believers are in a state of conflict, but not in a state of condemnation. The man to whom every sin is a misery is the man who may with confidence declare, “There is therefore now no condemnation.”

2. The text is written in the present tense. This “now” shows how distinctly the statement of non-condemnation is consistent with that mingled experience of the seventh chapter. With all my watching and warring, yet will I rejoice in the Lord even now; for “there is therefore now no condemnation.”

3. Observe our apostle’s change of expression. When he is speaking about the inward contention he speaks of himself, but when he comes to write upon the privileges of the children of God, he speaks of them in general terms. His is the confession, and theirs is the confidence. Note--

I. A refutation of the old serpent’s gospel. Say “There is no condemnation,” and this false gospel is before you. The serpent promulgated this in Eden, when he said, “Ye shall not surely die.” Some teach that you may live in sin, and die impenitent, but at death there is an end of you. Others tell us that if you die unforgiven it will be a pity, but you will come round in due time, after a purgatorial period. Here is Paul’s refutation. They would be condemned, every one of them, if it had not been that they are in Christ Jesus. The word “now” is as applicable to these condemned ones as to those who are freed from condemnation. “He that believeth not is condemned already.” There is nothing but condemnation so long as they remain in that state. “He that believeth not shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.”

II. A description of the believer’s position--“in Christ Jesus.”

1. By faith. By nature I am in myself, and in sin, and, therefore, condemned; but when I fly to Christ, and trust alone in His blood and righteousness, He becomes to me the cleft of the rock, wherein I hide myself. “He that believeth shall not come into condemnation.”

2. As our federal head. This is the teaching of chap. 5. As you were in Adam you sinned, and therefore you were condemned; and as you were in Christ through the Divine covenant of grace, and Christ fulfilled the law for you, you are justified in Him.

3. By a vital union. This is the teaching of chap. 6. (verses 4, 5). We are actually one with Christ by living experience.

4. By a mystical union (Romans 7:1-4). Shall the spouse of Christ be condemned with the world? “Christ loved His Church, and gave Himself for it”; shall she be condemned despite His death?

III. A description of the believer’s walk--“who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” In R.V. this sentence is omitted, and rightly so. The oldest copies are without it, the versions do not sustain it, and the fathers do not quote it. How, then, did it get into the text? Probably by general consent, in order that the great truth of the non-condemnation of those who are in Christ Jesus might be guarded from that antinomian tendency which would separate faith from good works. But the fear was groundless, and the tampering with Scripture was unjustifiable. Where did the man who made the gloss get his words from? From ver.

4. A man in Christ has received the Holy Ghost, for he walks according to His guidance. He is also quickened into the possession of a new nature called the spirit--the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. He is no longer in the flesh, he has become a spiritual man. Observe carefully that the flesh is there, only he does not walk after it. Combine the two clauses. On the one hand look to Christ alone, and abide in Him; and then look for the guidance of the Holy Spirit who is to be in you. By faith we are in Christ, and the Holy Spirit is in us.

IV. The absolution of the believer: “There is therefore now no condemnation.” This is--

1. A bold speech. Free grace makes men speak bravely when their faith has a clear view of Jesus.

2. A proved fact. The demonstrations of mathematics are not more clear and certain than the inference that if we are in Christ, and Christ died in our stead, there can be no condemnation for us.

3. A broad assertion. No condemnation--

4. An abiding statement. It was true in Paul’s day, and it is just as true at this moment. If you are in Christ Jesus there is now no condemnation.

5. A joyful realisation. If you have ever been burdened with a sense of sin you will know the sweetness of the text.

6. The most practical thing that ever was, because the moment a man receives this assurance into his soul his heart is won to his loving Lord, and the neck of his sinfulness is broken with a blow. (C. H. Spurgeon.)